Rajvansh Thapar 

Fitness is an important element in everyone’s life and with the onset of the pandemic the majority of the population globally has started focusing on health and fitness. With the gyms being closed for more than a year in some of the provinces all around the world, people opted for home workouts by either signing up for fitness apps or buying basic gym equ​​ipment so that they can squeeze up some time for their fitness during their routine. Even though gyms have started to open right now, the majority of the population is skeptical if they should hit the gym or not due to the fear of coronavirus. Therefore, it is still a good time to sell fitness and fitness related products online through social media platforms, personal websites and ppc advertisements.

In Canada alone, the number of searches for dumbbells is Thirty three thousand in the past month. Resistance bands have a search volume of Twenty Seven thousand in one single month. Home workout has a search volume of more than Twelve thousand in one month In Canada. Adjustable dumbbells have a search volume of more than twelve thousand in one single month. This is the data for July this year. Therefore, I want to develop a dropshipping strategy for selling fitness related products on my website and social media platforms.

Uber suggest 

Uber suggest 

What is dropshipping?

It is a very simple process. You create your own website and upload products on the website from other sites including Ali express or Oberlo. You market those goods to your audience. In the start it could be through paid ads, social media platforms or even through your own blog. As soon as the customer purchases a product from your website, that order is sent to your supplier. The supplier bears the responsibility of sending that product to the customer without you managing the inventory or taking responsibility for shipping the product to the customer. You only pay the supplier if the customer purchases a product from your website. Therefore, you can invest a small amount of money in order to start dropshipping. 

The advantage is you can set your own price on the store. For example, if a supplier sells a ten pound dumbbell for ten dollars, you can upload that same dumbbell for 25 dollars and sell it to the customer. Once the customer purchases your product, you pay the supplier ten dollars and earn 15 dollars from the sale. YOU ONLY REIMBURSE THE SUPPLIER ONCE THE CUSTOMER MAKES A PURCHASE FROM YOU. 

How do we start this business?

1. In order for us to start this business, we first need to have a website. In order for us to create a website we will be utilising shopify to create a store and purchase a domain name for the same as well. The advantage of shopify is that it is user friendly. Secondly, it facilitates you in creating a store easily and also offers you a 14 day trial plan which gives you enough time to understand the shopify dashboard and its working. 

2. Once our store is ready and we have decided the theme of the store and understood the dashboard, we will start importing products from two websites. The first one will be Aliexpress since it caters to most of the dropshipping needs and the second one will be oberlo since this websites is also po​​pular for drop shipping businesses

3. The third process will be deciding our social media strategy. As per the initiation of our project, we will be only focusing on our website marketing through paid advertisements. The first focus will be through Facebook advertisements and the second focus will be through Google Ads or ppc advertisements. In order for us to understand better, we are putting the creation of social media handles on hold till the time we understand our target market, their wants and needs. Once we are aware of the target audience and the kind of products they want, we can create a fully functional social media handle focused on providing the goods and products which our target audience needs. 

4. Since, we have a basic plan created for our online shop

And the onset of our business, it is necessary to know what our goals are. These will include short term and long term goals so that our organisation and our business are aligned and we follow our vision. 

                                                     IDENTIFYING GOALS 

Short term goals 

1. Ten thousand visits on our website in the first month 
2. Three percent conversion rate in our first month. Focusing on Three hundred purchases in the first month. In this case we are referring to adjustable dumbbells and resistance bands only. We are not covering normal dumbbells and other equipment which we plan to sell
3. Finalising our three main products by the end of second month and initiating social media channels including Facebook and Instagram for the starting 
4. Inception of blogs related to fitness and fitness activities in the third month. This will include one blog posted thrice a week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday. 
5. Adding one product every single month for six months in order to understand our target audience and the kind of products they want. After 6 months we will be able to narrow down our target audience and cater to their specific needs
6. Uploading videos related to fitness and how to implement home workouts using our equipment by the fourth month 

Long Term Goals 

1. Three thousand organic followers by the end of seven month 
2. Collaboration with athletes and influencers by the end of the ninth month. Minimum of two athletes and minimum of two influencers
3. 1 lakh unique visits to our website by the end of the eight month with a conversion focus of 6 percent that is six thousand buyers for the product 
4. Generating enough profit by the end of the 12th month so that we can give back 5 percent of our profits in establishing outdoor fitness activities in the North York region in Toronto 
5. Ranking on the first page of Google when it comes to SEO with at least fifty backlinks by the end of the first year of our inception 

FOCUSING ON OUR UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION TO GENERATE MORE SALES 

What is our Unique Selling proposition?

1. When our target audience has been narrowed through advertisements we will be able to understand the kind of products they want and why do they need it
2. We will be curating and sourcing products which fulfil their fitness needs in a simplified manner and provide them with the latest fitness gear which isn’t present in the market right now
3. We will be posting basic exercises which they can perform at home utilising our equipments and sending a printed or a pdf to their home in order to utilise those workout plans and equipment 

After we see the results from these three main points we will be able to understand how our audience interacts and purchases our products. After we understand that we can develop more unique selling propositions by understanding our competitors as well. 

RESEARCHING COMPETITION 

1. The first process in order to understand our competition is through google search. Whatever products we are offering, we will search it on google once and see what results come up in our search results. For example when we search dumbbells we have two paid advertisement results and the organic result is for canadian tire. When we are aware of what our competitors are offering, how their website interacts with the customer and how they function, we will be able to curate a better page for our audience and customer and improve our chances for success. 

2. Secondly, when we search dumbbells on social media platforms or online websites, advertisements will be started targeting us in order to make us a purchase, we will focus on all advertisements. We will understand what the competition is offering, we will understand how their website works, what their customers are saying, what is the gap in their offering. Once we understand the gap, we can focus on improving our gap and building our own unique selling proposition. We will follow up on their social media handles as well in order to understand what kind of content they use, what is the kind of content that resonates well with the audience, how customers engage with their content and how active the competitors are on all social media platforms 

This would further help us in understanding the kind of content to curate for our website which would further help us in improving our SEO for the website. Since, our current focus is only utilising our website for now and not social media platforms in the first stage, the first focus will be SEO and one we have narrowed down our audience, then our focus will be to build up that audience on our social media handles as well. 

SEO FOR OUR BUSINESS 

I understand that only utilising websites and not focusing on social media platforms can be risky but since we are a drop shipping business, we are at a stage where we have to understand our target market and finalise products which our target audience really wants and needs. When we are aware of at least three products which our audience needs, we can generate content on social media platforms surrounding those three products and focus on increasing the number of products which we offer in our arsenal

1. The first stage will be to choose at least five keywords on which our website wants to rank and we have finalised three keywords for now and will be implementing more keywords in our research further on 

• Dumbbell 
• Dumbbell set 
• Buy dumbbells online 

2. The second stage will be to use these keywords on our page. These will be utilised under

Images 

• Alt text
• Headlines 
• Meta description 
• Titles 
• Description of the product 

3. The third stage will be to analyse how many people are visiting our page when they research these keywords. This will help us understand our visits organically, bounce rate of the website when they visit our home page and how a customer interacts with our website by utilising these keywords 

Further research will help us in understanding how to optimise our website for these keywords and how to include more and better keywords in order to enhance our SEO for google search results. 

SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS FOR OUR BUSINESS

Once we are aware of the kind of content our users interact with and the kind of products they are currently looking for, we will be able to narrow down our products into three main products which our website offers and build up on that utilising two platforms 

1. Instagram
2. Facebook

Before we implement our channels for social media, we will focus on the kind of content which resonates the most with our audience. The number one content will be VIDEOS 

And further on we will study our competitors to understand the kind of content they are currently producing and how our target audience is interacting with the same. By understanding this part we will be able to focus on developing that content in a better manner so that we are able to capture a better market share for our audience. 

In conclusion, what our strategy will be based on and how we will curate it

1. Researching keywords related to fitness industry and equipment which people are looking to buy for their homes
2. Finalising at least five products before our inception and transferring them onto our website on shopify through either oberlo or ali express
3. Defining our short term and long term goals
4. Implementing SEO for our website by targeting five keywords at least
5. Running advertisements through Facebook and Google ads and getting traffic to our website 
6. Finalising at least three products and building up our social media presence on Facebook and Instagram
7. Developing our own blog on our website related to fitness and workouts for the equipments which we provide
8. Developing our branding in order to collaborate with influencers and athletes and posting their content on our websites and social media platforms
9. Utilising videos by athletes and influencers on our website and provide value to consumers by communicating the fitness activities which they can utilise by using our equipments 
10. Rank on the google’s number 1 page by utilizing five keywords, blogs and websites and building up our own audience.